CreditEase, a Beijing-based leading FinTech conglomerate in China, announced today that its direct investment arm, CreditEase FinTech Investment Fund (CEFIF), participated in the recent $100 million funding round of Cross River Bank (“Cross River”), a fast-growing provider of banking services for financial technology companies together with KKR, Lion Tree Partners, Battery Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Ribbit Capital, and others.
This additional funding will enable Cross River to invest in its continued growth by expanding its technology and product development teams as well as its compliance infrastructure. The capital will also allow Cross River to continue building and enhancing a complete banking platform where FinTech companies can leverage best-in-class banking technology coupled with compliance excellence.
Cross River combines innovative technologies with the trust, security and established expertise of a bank to create new services and solutions for FinTech companies by giving them access to a full suite of banking solutions and services. Cross River has developed partnerships with FinTech leaders in marketplace lending and payment processing arenas such as Affirm, Best Egg, Upstart, RocketLoans, Coinbase, and TransferWise.
“We are very pleased that our growth and progress has the endorsement of leading investors such as KKR,” said Gilles Gade, founder, CEO and Chairman of Cross River. “We are also excited to welcome CreditEase and Lion Tree Partners as new investors with deep experience and insights in the FinTech industry. This is a very strong signal that we continue to execute on our plan and are poised to take Cross River through its next phase of successful development here in the U.S. and across the globe.”
Ms. Anju Patwardhan, Managing Director of CEFIF, said, “Cross River is a proven bank innovator, focused on partnering with leading FinTech companies. We are very pleased to partner with Gilles Gade and the management team at Cross River.”
CEFIF continues to receive global recognition and honors since it was established three years ago. The Fund has invested in over 40 FinTech companies globally since inception in areas ranging from wealth management, alternative lending, InsurTech, payments and enterprise services. Some of its portfolio such as Tiger Brokers, Dasouche, Tradeshift and Circle have become unicorns in the recent years, while Funding Circle filed an IPO application and raised 300 million pounds which is the largest FinTech IPO in London since the global payment giant WorldPay has been listed on the market in 2015.
